Hammerman Ikon

Hammerman Ikon Film Guide

Red Riding Hood
2011

Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Billy Burke, Shiloh Fernandez, Max Irons, Virginia Madsen, Lukas Haas, Julie Christie, Michael Shanks

Valerie is a young woman who is torn between Peter, the love of her life, and Henry, the nice young man she is to marry. One of them may or may not be the werewolf who terrorises the dreamy village of Daggerhorn. Catherine Hardwicke's follow-up to Twilight tells pretty much the same story under a different name. She goes as far as to recast Billy Burke as the heroine's father. This is nominally a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, but apart from the main players (girl, grandmother and wolf), this clunky fantasy movie bears no resemblance to the fairy tale. David Leslie Johnson throws elements of religious fanaticism, mass hysteria and paranoia into his script, but it is no help when the visual look is so unoriginal, the characters so uninteresting, and the performances so consistently hammy.